Accidental Sire(108)

Margot didn't know where he lived. She couldn't remember what he looked like. Her mother had never even shown her a picture, insisting that it would be disloyal to Gerald. Neither Mr. McCready nor his family had bothered to contact her in thirty years, which was fine with Margot. She didn't have room in her life for an irresponsible drunk who couldn't be bothered to send so much as a birthday card. And frankly, she resented the idea that her father's family only reached out now, when she was at her lowest.

And it wasn't even her father, just some wacky great-aunt with a ridiculous name.

"You know, I thought you'd have that nasal-sounding Chicago accent, but you sound like you should be having tea with the queen. So proper and prim. I suppose that's your mama in ya. Did she make you take those diction lessons?"

"No, I just like using all the letter sounds."

The woman snorted a bit and said, "My point is, honey, I've been looking for you for weeks now, after I saw the video of your party on YouTube. I spotted you and knew you had to be Linda's daughter."

"YouTube?" Margot winced. "How many hits did it get?"

"Hundreds of thousands! Honey, you're your own meme!" Tootie exclaimed. Suddenly, a window popped up in the corner of Margot's screen, showing one of the press photos of Margot herding the flamingos away from the shrimp tower with giant print reading NO CAN HAZ SHRIMP, FLAMINGOZ! NO CAN HAZ!


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Margot buried her face in her hands. She'd spent most of her twenties carefully policing her own social media posts so as not to damage her professional reputation. And now this. Also, her great-aunt seemed to be awfully tech savvy for a woman in her eighties.

"Well, thanks for contacting me and mocking me with age-appropriate Internet humor . . . and dredging up a bunch of unresolved emotional issues," Margot muttered. "But I'm going to have to sign off now."

"Oh, sure, honey, I'm sure you're busy with your job search. How's that going?"

"I've submitted quite a lot of résumés," Margot said, trying to sound casual.

"Any interviews yet?" Tootie pressed.

Margot floundered a bit while searching for an answer. "It's early yet. You don't want people to think you're too eager."

"Not one call back, huh?"

Margot pursed her lips. "Not one."

"Well, that's just fine, because I have a proposition for you."

Margot's instinct to say no right that second was quelled when the bank paperwork that showed her checking account balance caught her eye. "What sort of proposition?"

"We need an event planner here at the family business. We'd be willing to provide room, board, and a generous salary."

"How generous?"

"Well, now, you've got to remember that the cost of living is much lower here as opposed to the big city," Tootie cautioned.

"How generous?" Margot asked again, and Tootie's blue eyes sparkled behind those reading glasses.

"Here, I'll send you the compensation package the family put together."

Another box popped up on Margot's screen. She clicked on the file and grimaced at the salary, which was about one-quarter of what she'd made at Elite Elegance. "How much lower is the cost of living there? Also, where is ‘there'?"

"Did you notice that the package includes health insurance?" Tootie asked. "When does your coverage run out?"

"Soon," Margot grumbled. "Also, I noticed you didn't answer the question about location."

"And I'm guessin' from the packing boxes in the background that your lease runs out pretty soon, too. So really, I could see why you would want to stay where you would be homeless and at risk of huge medical bills, in a city where you could be mugged or run down by a taxi or have a windowpane fall on you from twenty stories up. That's far preferable to coming down to Georgia, to a town where the crime rate is next to zero." 

Margot had never passed the Mason-Dixon Line, not even to Florida. Her mother had always insisted on family vacations to Lake Geneva, to New York, to France. Anyone could go to Disney World, she'd told Margot; Linda was trying to give Margot the world. Margot didn't know how well she would function in a rural environment, much less a place where she would constantly hear the banjo music from Deliverance in the back of her head.

"But my life is here. My friends are here. I need to stay where the jobs are. And right now, that's in Chicago."

"So you lay low for a few months in God's country, get to know your kinfolk, get that city air out of your lungs, and then relaunch yourself at people who will have forgotten your foul-up once someone else messes up worse. It will be good for you," Tootie told her.